[Gutenberg 47270] • Rathfelder's Hotel

Standing back beside the picturesque road encircling Windburg hill, near Cape Town, was a large, handsome house, rather long and high, however, according to the style of architecture usual in that stormy region of the world. The front windows on the ground floor opened out upon a broad terrace, or "stoop," as it is termed by the Dutch, shaded by a wide projecting trellised roof, which roof was so thickly interlaced by vines of the rich Constantia grape, the branches being then clustered over with massive bunches of the golden and purple fruit, that it was with difficulty the sun obtained a peep here and there down upon the persons beneath. It was early in February, a late summer month in Africa, as some of my young readers may know. The grounds surrounding the house were extensive and varied, and laid out in the Cape fashion-that is to say, they owed considerably more to Southern nature's luxuriant hand for their attractiveness and abundance than to art. Such a state of things was not, however, so much the result of choice or taste of the inhabitants, as because gardeners, and indeed working hands of every kind, were sometimes impossible to obtain at any price. One advantage, and a very decided one in fresh English eyes, accrues from this style of semi-cultivation. Flowers alike rare and prized in our costly green-houses, but regarded by the Cape inhabitants as valueless, display a richness of bloom and splendour little conceived of by the natives of colder climes.